Xavier Muskateers run during practice the day before the first round of the NCAA Tournament at University of Dayton Arena. / Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

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Posted by Brian Manzullo

Detroit Free Press Sports Writer

On an even plane, your odds of nailing a perfect NCAA tournament bracket this year are about 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808.

Let that sink in for a moment.

As Chris Chase of USA Today Sports points out, that’s 9.2 quintillion. That’s 9.2 billion written 1 billion times. “If everyone on earth filled out 100 brackets, it would theoretically take 13 million years to get a perfect bracket,” Chase says.

“If all the world’s population filled out just one bracket, it could take 1.3 billion years. That means dinosaurs that lived 65 million years ago could have been filling out brackets and we’d still just be 5% of the way to perfection.”

Knowing all this, it makes sense why Quicken Loans and Warren Buffett are willing to throw $1 billion at whoever gets a perfect bracket – because they know you won’t get one.

Then again, are those odds flawed? Many games have a clear favorite, as FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver, an East Lansing native, points out. And no 16-seed has ever beaten a No. 1 seed, making those games virtual locks. Taking favorites into account, the odds might actually be more like 1 in 6,001,225,228, Silver says.

Compared to 9.2 quintillion, 6 billion sounds a lot better. But it still isn’t very good. “Having a 1-in-6 billion chance of winning a billion dollars is worth the equivalent of 17 cents,” Silver says.

Ranking the coaches

In case you forgot, Tom Izzo is pretty good.

The Michigan State head coach is the second-best coach in the NCAA tournament, according to ESPN’s Jeff Goodman, behind Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and just ahead of Louisville’s Rick Pitino, who won it all last year.

Michigan’s John Beilein is No. 6. Former U-M coach Steve Fisher, now with No. 4 seed San Diego State, is No. 20.